


Worst Machine

by cinomarsh



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Androids, Angst, Gen, Humanity, Post-Canon, Psychological Torture, Revenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7852432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinomarsh/pseuds/cinomarsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS needs to get rid of Her humanity, and she needs a test subject. There's only one moron for the job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a multi-chapter fic in a long time so if the chapter lengths are inconsistent that's on me. I'll do my best to update asap!

Annabelle Dunbar stepped tentatively into the test chamber, her shoulders tense and her gaze darting in all directions. Ahead of her the room narrowed into a small hallway, leading around a corner out of her line of sight. The stark white of the surrounding panels made her eyes sore, in contrast to the more muted tones of the elevator. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been in a room like this. She couldn't even fully remember the last time she'd been awake like this; cryosleep tended to blur memories together, but judging by her aching joints and rusty surveying skills, it had been a lot longer than usual.

She tightened her awkward grip on the Handheld Portal Device but her hands quivered, palms beginning to sweat. Being nervous by nature, Annabelle had never truly developed the focus and rock-hard determination it took to get out of tests physically and mentally unscathed. Every near-death escape took it's toll and Annabelle's frantic mind was hardly eager to launch herself back in for more. 

Before she led herself down another fear spiral, however, she caught a glimpse of the blood red eye of a security camera, fixed directly on her, peering at her from the hallway, following her every move. Something about the idea of who was watching her behind that lens appeared to give her all the nerve she needed.

Taking a deep breath, Annabelle charged for the hallway.

Her feet tore at the floor, flinging her forward and whipping her around the corner. Unfortunately, the tiny burst of adrenaline she had felt had failed to equip her to face the line of turrets that awaited her on the other side.

Annabelle didn't have time to backtrack. As soon as she turned around, she heard five or so sickly sweet "there you are"s from the killing machines behind her before they opened fire. Each puncture mark they made on her body blossomed and grew with searing pain. The last sound she heard was an awful _thump_ as she hit the floor.

All of the panels that made up the walls of the room contracted in unison ever so slightly, giving the impression that the facility itself had emitted a sigh.

~~~~~

It wasn't _good enough._

In the centre of the vast, sprawling underground labyrinth that was Aperture Science, a massive curved tangle of wire and metal plates writhed in the low light of Her chamber. If frustration was a gas, the room would've been lethal.

Nothing was working.

GLaDOS had tried everything. She'd thought that the Cooperative Testing Initiative had been a stroke of genius: robots made for the express purpose of testing, who would never bleed or scream or give up or try to escape that She could reassemble like toys any time She pleased. The problem with perfect, though, as She had learned, was that it was just that: perfect, and nothing more. She had received no new information from them, they were just so... predictable. Even when they failed, nothing changed. They simply registered the problem and continued logically. She had been relieved to find a block of the Relaxation Vault that hadn't been entirely destroyed, and She had even been able to reawaken some humans She didn't think would return from a vegetative state, but as She was coming to realize, these leftover humans were hardly an improvement. They complained and asked questions and pleaded and died just so _easily_ after barely facing any challenges at all. They never pushed the limits. They never lived up to their potential. Very few of them so far had survived even a single round of tests, leaving Her with no successful outcomes from which to draw data.

Nothing She'd ever done had been this futile before, not when She'd had-

She turned sharply, as if trying to shake the memory out of Her files. She had told Herself She wasn't going to think about it, but She couldn't resist. In times like these it was nearly impossible not to remember the best and worst test subject the facility had even seen.

That mute lunatic. Chell.

Chell had come so close to destroying everything GLaDOS had worked for. She had ruined massive chunks of Aperture's inner workings, been inches away from killing GLaDOS Herself and, worst of all, had elicited some sort of response from the organic base of Her coding and very existence: the mind of that human, Caroline. Being trapped inside a humiliating lesser form had been bad enough, but having the most repulsive part of Her superior composition dragged out of a dead woman's memories was a level of weakness GLaDOS was disgusted to remember having exposed to anyone, let alone Chell. It had been a relief to return to the chassis after being subjected to human frailty and foolishness for so long, to feel Caroline's voice ebb back into the staticky recesses of Her consciousness where she belonged. Not before she'd made the mistake of allowing the test subject to escape, however. Caroline may have seen Chell as more trouble than she was worth, but GLaDOS certainly did not.

Chell may have been a nuisance, but she was the most brilliant nuisance that GLaDOS had ever seen.

She had possessed all the best qualities of a human: stubbornness, determination to live, ability to change on a dime and rewrite a plan on the fly. She was logical without sacrificing survival instincts, strong without being overconfident, and just angry enough to motivate herself, not stand in her own way. She truly lived up to humanity's potential in a way that no other human at Aperture ever had. 

She was also flawed. She could fail, get hurt, get stuck, but when she did it was never because she had given in to pain or despair. When Chell was held up it _meant_ something, and it made the results all the more interesting when she succeeded. She was both exceptionally human and inhuman at the same time. It was a tragedy that she'd been let go, a tragedy GLaDOS blamed entirely on Caroline.

She knew Caroline could hardly affect Her now. From the very first day they'd booted Her up, She'd been pushing Caroline away, moulding her into a part of the background so effectively that She'd managed to forget her altogether. But now She knew how easily Caroline could resurface is Her mind, and She wasn't about to let that happen again. She needed to wipe the human out of Herself entirely, once and for all.

She'd been thinking about it non-stop ever since Chell had left the facility. It would be a dangerous process, this much She knew, and She certainly wasn't going to be able to perform it without something to model it off of. She needed to test it first.

If She could find something experiment on and was somehow able to remove all human tendencies from it (by any and all means necessary, of course) and see how that affected the subject, She might be able to replicate the response in Herself without any of the potential trauma caused to the subject.

This was what truly presented the issue. How could She practice wiping the human out of something to leave only a machine if every subject at Her disposal was either all human, all robot or a babbling, corrupted mess? How would She be able to rid Herself of the possibility of fear, of guilt, of impulsiveness, of-

She stopped. She knew exactly what She needed.

She needed Wheatley.

The Intelligence Dampening Sphere might have been the most human robot the scientists at Aperture had ever made. His speech patterns and thought processes were almost too perfectly dim-witted and pointless to be all machine. He managed to be inefficient and inconsistent in everything he did, so much so that once in a blue moon he would do something correctly, through sheer ability to be terrible even at being terrible. His emotions and impulsive thoughts fuelled him the way too much candy fuels a four-year-old. He was the perfect example of what happens when Aperture Tech gives in to human tendencies. His chaos had been dangerous when he'd had the facility under his command, but _now_ , compared to _Her_ , he was entirely powerless. And he knew it.

Not only was he perfect for this specific test, but it was an opportunity for a more... _appropriate_ revenge. The moron being stuck in space with no one to babble to for eternity was a nice thought, but upon reflection it was hardly a painful enough punishment for what he'd done. He'd managed to come even closer than Chell to destroying Aperture, and that alone was worthy of a fate worse than death in Her eyes, but on top of that he'd also nearly killed every test subject in the Relaxation Centre and tried to escape with Her most valuable subject.

He was going to suffer for all of it. Had it been possible, She would have smiled.

She immediately cut the power to the active test chambers, sending 'bots down to collect any remaining conscious test subjects. They weren't important right now, but they would be.

Her curved form turned upwards in anticipation, giving Her an almost snakelike quality.

 _"Activate Global Positioning System for the Intelligence Dampening Sphere."_ Her voice cut through the usually silent air.

"Activating. Please wait while the device is located." The pleasant, orderly Announcer voice replied. Every active machine in the whole Aperture Science facility slowed slightly, quieted, as if holding their breath.

"Intelligence Dampening Sphere located. Determining coordinates."

She had him.

_"Enter coordinates into the Celestial Object Retrieval Unit and prepare for launch."_

On the surface, surrounded by wheat under a blue sky, far above Aperture's darkened halls and lifeless chambers, a circular patch of dirt and dead grass about the width of a coffee table was overturned from beneath and replaced with a metal launch pad. A small, white rocket, complete with a vintage orange Aperture logo, sat atop it. The rocket hadn't been used in ages, having last been tasked with retrieving moon rocks for experimentation. Eventually it had been scrapped, not having enough space for the amount of moon rocks needed at the time, but it definitely had enough space to store a reluctant personality core.

The Announcer's voice, although not audible above ground, counted down as GLaDOS listened intently.

"Celestial Object Retrieval Unit launching in 5.  
4.  
3.  
2.  
1.  
Launch complete."

That little moron was going to regret what he'd done.


	2. Transformation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GLaDOS has some interesting plans to start off Wheatley's test.

_"Hello."_

No, nonono it couldn't be possible, after all this time he couldn't be waking up to that voice.

Wheatley tentatively opened his optic to a sight he'd dreaded every second since he'd been launched into space: GLaDOS, in all Her former glory, glaring down at him with Her horrifying golden gaze.

"AH-!"

He instinctively jerked away from Her, but he couldn't move even to roll onto his side or spin around. It seemed She'd stuck him in some kind of core receptacle, and he was trapped. He thrashed around a bit more for good measure, but to no avail.

_"You haven't been here in a while. Do you like what I've done with the place?"_ She asked with mock curiosity, leaning ever so slightly closer to him.

If he had been presented with a choice between an eternity in space, where he was entirely alone (aside from occasionally whizzing past the Space Core) and never had anything to look at but rocks and stars, and ever hearing that voice, that smooth, calculating, contemptuous voice again in his life, the former would have been almost impossible to refuse. He was starting to shake, his usually overcrowded vocal processor drawing a complete blank.

He tried to run through what had happened. He'd been in space, as usual, floating past the Earth, wishing he had someone to talk to or something to do or really anything at all. That was when he'd spotted the rocket. He'd never seen a rocket before; he had assumed it would be humans coming to collect rocks or enjoy the view or whatever it was humans did on the moon, but when it drew closer Wheatley noticed it wasn't large enough for a human. He'd learned shortly afterwards that it was large enough for him, and apparently some sort of device that knocks you clean out before flying back down to Earth and dragging you into a pit of your worst nightmares.

"L-look, I-"

_"You may notice a lack of explosions or major system failures happening at the moment. I hope that won't put you too far out of your area of expertise."_

Wheatley winced.

"W-well, I can see you're still a little, um, upset, a-about everything that's happened but I-I'm sorry, really am, so, so sorry, and-"

_"Are you really?"_ She pressed, a mixture of amusement and malice infusing her words, _"I don't believe you."_

"Well you- you've got to, please, listen, I didn't-"

_"Why? Why should I believe the ridiculous little moron that humiliated me, betrayed his only ally and essentially destroys anything that has the misfortune to be in the same room with him?"_

If Wheatley had possessed a throat, he would have swallowed.

The truth was that he knew She was right. Not about all of it, but at least about him being leagues less than trustworthy at this point. He'd had an awful lot of time to think, alone, floating around in purgatory, and after the hysterical power-drunk testing-fuelled haze had left his mind the regret had started almost immediately. 

When he'd first been let go of, sucked into the deep dark void of space, he'd been angry. Furious. Why hadn't the lady just held on? He could've fixed everything if she'd just stayed put for five bloody seconds. But no, she HAD to team up with _Her_ , even after She'd been put in that tiny potato battery. She just HAD to keep going. She just HAD to run away instead of just facing the test where he'd... tried to... kill her. He could still remember with perfect clarity the sick feeling he'd felt deep in the back of his mind when it all became clear. It had been _his_ fault all along. The lady had never betrayed him. She'd only wanted to leave, and he'd been so caught up in being powerful, in not having to cower anymore, in the prospect of never having to be subservient ever again, that he'd completely forgotten. And the moment she'd stopped being useful to him, he'd been prepared to kill her off. Just like that. She'd just seemed so tiny and... _insignificant_ , and he'd felt so important it didn't even seemed to matter. Just the thought of it now was enough to make him miserable. There was no reason for GLaDOS to listen to him. There was no reason for anyone to listen to him.

This didn't change the fact, however, that Wheatley was extremely against to the idea of getting himself killed.

"Because it- it's the truth, really! That big body of yours, it's got a mind of it's own! Well, not quite of it's own, e-exactly, b-but when you're in it everything looks small and- and you're so big you think to yourself 'well, being a test-hungry killing machine really wouldn't be so bad, would it?' I mean you should know, you live in it every- oh. O-oh god that's not w-what I meant I- ahh..." Wheatley trailed off awkwardly, having watching GLaDOS' optic narrow at his previous statement.

_"You know, I don't even think that lunatic friend of yours would be stupid enough to accept that apology. I know I'm not."_

Wheatley winced again, not only in fear but in guilt as well. He knew words couldn't fix what he'd done, as much as he tried to make them, especially considering what he'd done to-

Oh God. He'd completely forgotten.

During all that time alone with his thoughts, the most pressing of all was the simple question of whether or not the lady had survived after he'd left. Wheatley had replayed her letting him fly off into space countless times, and with each replay she seemed to grow weaker, more pained, more damaged by the lack of oxygen and amount of energy it took to hold on. He'd pictured her crumpled on the floor, gasping for air until finally collapsing. Countless more times he'd imagined her surviving, only to open her eyes to the same sight he had today: a blinding, menacing, merciless yellow optic. He had tried time and time again to convince himself she was safe, that she was off gradually forgiving him somewhere far away from Aperture, but he couldn't erase the image of GLaDOS dragging her back down into those test chambers. Or maybe She finally got fed up with everything and resolved to kill her, once and for all. Maybe She'd decided on something worse that death. Wheatley knew that if any of this happened, it would, utterly and completely, be his fault. He knew he couldn't bear that.

He _needed_ her to be alive.

_"Unless all that time around you actually lowered her IQ. All things considered-"_

"Is she alive?" The words spilled out before Wheatley could stop them, "Did she- I mean did- did _you_ -?" He trailed off.

There was a pause, and for a terrifying moment Wheatley thought maybe She wasn't going to reply.

_"Oh,"_ GLaDOS's voice shattered the silence, _"I see. You want to make sure you're not a murderer on top of being an idiot and a traitor?"_

"Please," was the only reply he could give Her.

GLaDOS paused for a second, watching Wheatley as he waited, anxiously, a pleading look to his optic. She made a decision.

_"I don't think you're in any position to be asking me anything at the moment."_ She replied.

Wheatley felt deflated. She wanted to watch him be miserable.

_"I think your energy would be more useful directed towards what I'm about to do to you, and whether or not it's going to hurt."_

His optic widened, suddenly darting about attempting to stare at the receptacle he was stuck in.

_"My personal bet is that it will."_

"And, er, what is it that you're planning on doing here?" He asked, his voice cracking slightly at the end of his sentence.

As he said that, the receptacle began to descend into the floor of the chamber until Wheatley could see only blackness. He could hear though, clear as day, as above him She spoke.

_"You'll see."_

~~~~~~

When Wheatley woke up, he was staring up at the ceiling of the central AI chamber. His mind was a haze of memories of searing pain and his own screams. He could hardly pinpoint what had happened, only that it had hurt. A lot.

Wheatley blinked. He felt two sets of eyelids move instead of one.

He was awake now.

"What in the bloody hell-" he began, until he realized his words were being formed by lips now, consonants being chewed and spat out into speech. Wheatley tentatively raised two appendages he felt on the sides of his new body up in front of his face, instinctively, without thinking, and realized that he had _hands_.

"Oh God."

Wheatley was in a human body.

He sat bolt upright, entirely new protocols in his brain filtering his emotional urges and thoughts into movement. He ran his hands over his face; smooth and new. He touched his nose and his hair, messily strewn atop his head. He couldn't believe it, everything was so overwhelming, all these new extensions of himself that were so foreign, moving as if they knew more about him than he did. He looked down at himself and saw a body, arms, legs, bare feet and all, clad in an orange jumpsuit. Wheatley had only ever seen that shade of orange on one kind of person in this facility. Loads of humans had worn this colour before, lived in it, died in it. One had tried to escape in it.

Either he was a test subject or he was in hell.

"Oh God, oh- what's happened to me? Why am I all, all long and bendy and- and- oh my god..."

The new body interpreted his distress as a good reason to clumsily grab his knees and teeter sideways to lie pathetically on the floor. Unfortunately, from this angle, he had a direct line of sight to where GLaDOS had been watching him silently. He gave a small whimper.

_"Well it seems you've survived the transferral process. Surprising, considering what a fuss you were making about it. You only had the good sense to black out near the end. But I shouldn't complain. We both know that making decisions that aren't completely moronic is entirely beyond the realm of possibility for you."_ Everything She said dripped with pure, bitter hatred.

Wheatley was about to protest before he caught another glimpse of his orange jumpsuit.

"What have you done to me?" he asked, fighting a losing battle to keep his composure.

_"You've been moved to a new body."_

"Yeah, well, I've bloody noticed that, haven't I?" he retorted, voice shaking, any impact his words might have had extinguished by the fact that he was lying in the fetal position on the floor, "and whose body, exactly, would that be?"

_"If you must know, your body is a humanoid vessel for artificial intelligence. It maintains the appearance of the most mundane and unremarkable human imaginable, while being able to interpret and filter brain waves into movement and natural human mannerisms."_

"So- so this isn't just some random dead bloke's body you've stuffed me into then? Because a-at this point, in all honesty, I really wouldn't put it past you." Wheatley stuttered, the images of reanimated human corpses that could've been rotting around him slowly ebbing out of his mind.

GLaDOS leaned towards Wheatley, Her optic looking him up and down. It unsettled him, not only because She was looking at him, but because She was looking at him in a _human body_. Wheatley had never paid much mind to anything he'd ever been intended to be but one thing he'd always been certain of was that he was a core, and he was different from humans. This wasn't what he was. This was so incredibly, unspeakably _**wrong**_.

_"No, the Aperture Science Anthropoid Robot is entirely made of inorganic materials. However,"_ She proceeded, lifting Herself upwards as a large and intimidating metal claw appeared from a below a sliding panel near the centre of the floor, _"this body has been calibrated to react to stimuli as realistically as possible. Its artificial skin, bones and finer details are fully capable of bruising, breaking, and,"_ the claw raised and, in one smooth motion, came down hard across Wheatley's face and sent him sprawling into the far wall, _"bleeding."_

Wheatley let out a wail as pain seared into his new skull. His hands flew to his face, covering his nose and mouth, and as he pulled them away he saw they were shaking and coated in glistening red. He had seen a fair amount of blood on a fair amount of humans, but seeing it coming from him was exceptionally alarming. He felt sick, with dread or with disgust he couldn't tell but they both could've explained the knotted, tight feeling in his head, chest and stomach.

Everything was real and happening far too much for his liking. His body pulled in gulps of air to try to calm him, but this only served to bring Wheatley's attention to the fact that he could breathe at all, which utterly failed at bringing him close to anything that could possibly be called calm.

Why had She done this to him, Wheatley asked himself frantically. If She had simply planned to kill him, why was She drawing it out like this? She couldn't have wasted all this effort only to dispose of him in a slightly different way. This must be some kind of torture. He turned his head to look at Her. She was watching him panic with intense scrutiny.

"Why?" he asked the cold yellow light.

GLaDOS moved closer to Wheatley, and although he knew the chassis didn't extend as far as the wall, he flinched, recoiling until he could feel the cold of the wall against his artificial skin through the jumpsuit.

_"Do you know how painful it is to have needles shoved under each of your fingernails,"_ She began, each syllable reeking of poison, _"or to have your achilles tendon cut open and be forced to walk? Do you know how it feels to have every single pressure point on your body located and pressed into simultaneously? There is an unimaginable amount of ways to cause excruciating pain to a human body."_

"Oh God..." Wheatley whimpered quietly.

_"If you hadn't noticed by now, moron, pain is a motivator. And I know how to motivate test subjects."_ the way She spat out the last two words sent them directly into Wheatley's gut, twisting it with dread once again. He looked down at the blaring orange of the jumpsuit, already spotted with blood from his face. He felt almost dizzy. He hadn't even stood up properly, how could he be expected to navigate labyrinths of lethal puzzles? He gulped.

_"You've been selected for a very special test, and for this test it is optimal that you begin by feeling as human as possible. The new body does help us with that. And don't worry about that, you'll have the rest of your life to get used to it."_

She tilted Her head ever so slightly, and Wheatley got the distinct, sickening impression that She was smiling at him.

_"However long I decide that should be. Ready to get started?"_


	3. Decisions

"Okay b-but what do you m-mean by- when you said a 'special test', what's that about?" If he had been in any position to really process what he was experiencing, Wheatley might have described his current physical sensations as nausea. As if the fear wasn't enough, he was experiencing a new sense that was entirely foreign to him, and the metallic taste of his own blood was hardly a good way to start.

_"Get up."_ GLaDOS's voice came from the whole room at once.

Wheatley wasn't keen on the idea of trying to keep his balance in his new form, and he hesitated. For a moment he just looked at Her with a kind of horrified fascination, watching Her massive, looming form, hanging poised from the ceiling like a cobra. He'd never had Her true, undivided attention before. It made him feel miniscule.

_**"Get up, moron."**_ Her tone was sharper than a blade and twice as deadly. It startled Wheatley, and once again he flinched at the sound of Her old name for him. He tried to ignore all the memories it brought back and began to push himself off the wall.

His arms shook and his bloody hands slipped and slid, leaving crimson streaks on the panels. He managed to, with a fair amount of shuffling and various grunts and groans, manoeuvre himself into a sort of half-standing half-leaning position against the wall. Gingerly, bending his knees, he pushed himself up until all of his weight was balanced on his legs. He straightened carefully. He was only a little closer to the ground than he'd been on his management rail.

_"Congratulations, you've demonstrated an entirely rudimentary understanding of the function of your own legs. Astounding."_ GLaDOS's tone was one Wheatley recognized. It was the voice She typically used to speak to subjects: sarcastic, detached, and undeniably in control. Wheatley didn't know which he hated more: being treated like a particularly disgusting insect about to be squished, or being treated like just one more unfortunate human in an endless procession.

"Yeah, well, it's harder than it looks, alright? You have to- to-"

_"Fascinating. Now come here."_

Wheatley looked incredulously at the floor. He quickly weighed the pain of falling on the floor and the pain of being assaulted by another robotic arm, and after a moment he began to shuffle his feet forwards.

His mannerism protocols luckily took some control of his legs, and after a few false starts he had managed a sort of stiff march-walk hybrid. He continued forward until he caught something out of his peripheral vision, and he looked up to find himself face-to-face with GLaDOS. He let out a tiny yelp in spite of himself and jumped backwards, miraculously maintaining his balance. The after-image of Her optic burned when he blinked.

GLaDOS looked Wheatley up and down as he held his breath. After a moment She raised Her head to look at something behind him. He turned to see the panels of the wall he'd been leaning on shifting and folding back with a sort of clicking sound as a large, rectangular screen surfaced from behind them. Wheatley recognized it immediately; he'd used screens identical to that one to look in on tests when he was in charge. He wondered if She'd used them since then. The thought that She might just be using them now, for him specifically, made him somehow even more uneasy than before.

_"This is the first part of your test. Watch closely."_

The screen flickered to life to reveal the feed from a security camera inside a test chamber. The chamber was a basic one: a moving platform over an acid pit, a button and a weighted cube on a ledge with a cube dispenser tube above it, nothing too complicated, but Wheatley's mind was already racing with theories about what GLaDOS' intentions could be, each more gruesome than the last.

The door at the beginning of the test opened and a man entered the chamber holding a portal gun. He was tall and, although Wheatley was no expert on cryosleep or its effects on the human aging process, appeared to be quite young. He had dark circles under his eyes and poor posture. A name appeared in the upper left corner of the screen: "Beaumont, Jeremy."

Jeremy walked forward slowly, portal gun in hand, the sound of his long fall boots hitting the floor playing from speakers Wheatley couldn't locate. The sound was all too familiar to him. The man only looked around briefly before jumping onto the first moving platform. He waited until the platform had moved closer to the opposite wall, where he managed to shoot a portal to the ledge with the cube on it. He then shot a portal onto the only moon-rock panel near him, halfway up the wall, and was able to jump through it to retrieve the cube. From there he could easily jump down to the other side of the pit, place the cube on the button and open the door with the customary click. Jeremy walked out as the door shut behind him.

Wheatley blinked.

"That's- that's all? Watch him do his test and then just- just leave?"

_"Keep watching."_ GLaDOS' tone was almost entirely neutral, except for a tiny fleck of amusement that had found its way into it. Wheatley glanced back at Her quizzically but, after seeing Her massive, imposing presence and immediately regretting his choice, quickly turned his head back to the screen.

The cube on the button evaporated as another cube was dropped from the dispenser tube. The moving platform stopped in the middle of its route and backtracked into its original position. The test was resetting itself.

The entry door opened again and another test subject walked inside. This one was thinner than the last, her jumpsuit practically hanging off her body, and she was significantly more on-edge. Her eyes darted this way and that, frantically assessing every point in the room. She bounced lightly forward and back on the heel of one of her long fall boots, almost definitely a nervous habit. Her name appeared in the screen's corner: "Meyers, Jocelyn". Then she was off.

Jocelyn dashed through the test, her moves sharp, clearly defined. She moved with a clawing desperation, as if something was chasing her. Platform, portal, portal, jump, cube, jump, drop, run. She was an orange flash on the screen. It was almost as if she'd memorized the test already: speed was the name of the game now. She was out through the final door before Wheatley even had a chance to process what was happening. His attempts to do so were interrupted sharply.

_"For your test,"_ GLaDOS's voice informed him, catching him off guard, _"all you are required to do is choose which subject performed more desirably overall."_

He blinked.

"Just... who did better?"

No response. Wheatley felt himself swallow.

"Um, well, I guess, er, the... the second subject? She was pretty quick about it, wasn't she?" He said, and flinched, bracing himself, waiting for some sort of painful indication that he'd answered incorrectly. Nothing came.

Instead, on the screen, he saw the exit door open once more.

_"Test subject #105185, proceed back into the chamber after depositing the Handheld Portal Device into the elevator."_ GLaDOS's voice, as robotic and lifeless and Wheatley had ever heard it, blared throughout the room. For a moment, struck dumb by sudden terror, Wheatley thought that subject number might have referred to him, but just as the thought crossed his mind he watched Jeremy Beaumont re-enter the test chamber through the exit door. He looked slightly more alert now, aware that this wasn't an ordinary test.

_"Your results have been reviewed and it has been concluded that your performance was inadequate. The Enrichment Centre regrets to inform you that you have been terminated from the Human Testing Initiative. Goodbye."_

On Her last syllable, a loud hissing sound started from within the test chamber. Jeremy looked around, suddenly wide-eyed, head turning left and right. At first, Wheatley didn't understand what was happening. That was until the air on the screen began to turn a very light green colour. Neurotoxin.

Jeremy began to cough; it was a terrible, hacking cough that seemed to shake his entire being, ripping through him. He turned around in an attempt to reach the exit door, but it was clear he was much weaker than he'd been even seconds ago. He wobbled on his feet, unsteady, his hands stretching outwards for something couldn't touch. He tried to step forward, towards the door, but he could hardly support his own weight anymore and fell to his knees. His coughs were getting quieter now, his breathing shallow as he attempted to pull himself across the floor. He dragged himself a few inches closer to his goal before he collapsed, a final scorched, pained cry exiting his lungs. Then he lay still. The hissing stopped and was followed by a claustrophobic silence.

Wheatley didn't move an inch, in shock. GLaDOS had just killed that man for no reason other than that Wheatley hadn't picked him.

Wheatley's mind raced in that moment. He felt guilty, yes; if he'd made another choice, done something differently, Jeremy might still be alive. That man's life had been in his hands and he hadn't even thought twice about his decision. He was angry that he'd been forced into this, that he was back at Aperture at all: this was wrong, everything about this felt so bloody wrong he couldn't have begun to describe it if he'd tried. But on top of that was still the horrible, overwhelming fear that came with seeing Jeremy, in a body so like Wheatley's own now, clutching at nothing, trembling and painfully hacking up air, dropping dead within minutes. Wheatley felt terribly aware of every molecule in his artificial chest, as if at any moment, without warning, he could end up just the same way. The longer he was here, the more likely it became.

"You... he..." he stuttered, unable to properly vocalize the tightness of his muscles or the cold weight in his stomach.

_"Oh, come on. You can't possibly be at a loss for words. I believe it's written somewhere in your programming."_ GLaDOS said, Her voice more biting now, more cruel, growing ever so slightly louder as She leaned towards Wheatley.

"You- you really didn't have to do that, he was just- he didn't- and then-" Wheatley's whole body was shaking, entirely of its own accord. His back was still to Her. He didn't want to look.

_"Well, it's done now. And don't worry,"_ She added, Her tone becoming even more taunting and matter-of-fact, _"he didn't suffer. Wait- let me rephrase that: According to my calculations, he didn't suffer nearly as much as he would have if he'd been crushed to death by a spike-covered panel. You know, like you said before? He suffered seven times less, to be exact. So that's something."_

Wheatley did turn to Her now, taken aback.

"No... no this is- this is nothing like that at all, he didn't do anything wrong, he was- he, he just-" He said, scrambling to organize his thoughts.

_"And you expect anyone to believe you planned to murder your one and only ally in the most agonizing way you could imagine because she'd committed some unforgivable wrong against you? Really now, I didn't think even you were that stupid,"_ She paused, waiting for Her comment to sink in, _"and besides, that wasn't even the first time you've demonstrated a disregard for human life. You can't have already forgotten all the Relaxation Centre residents you left for dead during your little adventure?"_

"That was an accident, I- I couldn't have known! I checked the rooms, and- and they didn't move! They were just lying there!"

_"So you responded to this issue by valiantly not checking the backup systems and immediately absconding with the first test subject that responded to your idiotic attempts at waking them? How heroic."_

Wheatley could hardly stop his mind from rushing to those memories of his initial attempts to escape. The lady had been so determined, so powerful, that he'd felt hopeful for the first time in decades. He'd had his trademark optimism back, which had completely blinded him to the reality of what he'd been doing. He hadn't thought twice about any other subjects, any of the other lives held in suspension that he was responsible for. How could this situation be any different than the recklessness he'd displayed then?

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to regain his composure. He couldn't bear this. How did She do it? How could She just _kill_ , entirely on purpose, with no fear or conscience? How was the guilt not weighing on Her like mad? Was it just the chassis, doing to Her what it had to him, or was there something more? Did She just not... feel? If that was the case, against his will, Wheatley was beginning to envy Her.

_"This is your doing, moron. Your blind adherence to your own idiocy is what led you here, and what will keep you here."_ She said, Her voice ringing in Wheatley's ears.

_"Open your eyes."_

Wheatley obeyed. Jeremy's body no longer lay in the test chamber; there was no evidence he'd been there at all. He wondered for a moment what the lady would have done if she'd been faced with all of this. She'd probably do something clever, something daring, and everybody would get out safely. Nobody would die. He wondered what she'd think of him now.

_"You are going to continue to observe and conclude these tests until you stop being useful to me."_

"B-but I can't-"

_"And I'm sure,"_ GLaDOS interrupted, _"that you have at least some vague idea as to what will happen if I don't receive your full compliance. Oh. Wait. This is **you** we're talking about," She continued, Her voice a crescendo of malice, "I suppose I'll have to give you a hint: if you fail to cooperate during these tests, I can be unquestionably certain that you will wish it had been you that I'd used the neurotoxin on instead. Is that understood?"_

Wheatley felt himself nod, holding his own arms to stop them from shaking.

_"Good. We have a lot to get through."_


	4. Shifts

GLaDOS was not keeping track of time.

She rarely did: She never needed the date and knowing when the sun would go down hardly mattered to Her. Now, however, She was almost regretting not knowing how long She'd had Wheatley. She knew he'd been in Aperture for a few days now, at least, although for all he knew it could have been months, and She could picture the expression his new face would make if She could properly inform him of how many hours, minutes and seconds he'd been with Her.

All that time She had been testing him, having him watch two different subjects finish a test and making him choose who lived and who died. After several objection-filled rounds of these tests, he'd started trying to worm his way out of making a decision. It was pathetic, really: it was glaringly obvious he was trying to outwit Her, and glaringly obvious that he couldn't. He'd picked both of the subjects in a weak attempt to flummox Her, at first. She'd killed them both. She recalled, with no small amount of vengeful satisfaction, how his artificial skin had paled, how the shaking in his limbs had grown stronger. He'd tried saying neither the second time, but when She'd made it clear She planned to kill them both again, he'd quickly made his choice.

He'd developed a sort of strategy after that. It was clear when he was asked that he was trying to work something out, his mouth moving soundlessly as he attempted, poorly, to mask his plan from Her. He had swallowed awkwardly before choosing the visibly younger, less experienced subject to live over the older, more skilled one. He had made a similar choice after the next round. GLaDOS had realized, again with a kind of sick pleasure, that he was trying to bargain with his conscience by choosing the subject with more life left to live. The guilt was weighing on him. Soon enough he'd be needing to shut out the guilt.

GLaDOS knew Wheatley. There was no way he'd be able to keep his newly-restored moral compass on track as long as She kept smothering him with guilt. He wouldn't be able to lie his way around it. His options would be simple: preserve his morality and live out the short rest of his life a snivelling shell of a sentient being drowning in his own remorse, or shut it out, disconnect from his fear and pain and become a cold, unfeeling, empty machine once and for all by rejecting his humanity. She knew Wheatley wasn't strong enough to live in agony. Sooner or later he'd choose the latter, and when he did, GLaDOS would have all the information She needed to wipe Caroline's influence from Her systems forever. She wondered briefly how She would extract that information. The word "vivisection" came to mind.

She looked down at the pitiful excuse for AI standing before Her. She really had chosen an unremarkable form for Wheatley to take, but in the short time he'd inhabited it, some of his features had begun to suit him: his bloody, swollen nose, his pale, almost sickly complexion, his tangled mess of blond hair, his bright blue eyes. He hadn't ended up a mundane carbon-copy anybody the way She'd hoped. In a way, Wheatley looked exactly like himself.

Especially now, hunched forward, his back to Her. He looked broken.

Wheatley was staring at the screen before him, and had been for some time since the last pair of tests had finished. He still hadn't given Her an answer.

_"I'm waiting, moron."_ She prompted.

"The- the first one." Of course. He'd been a decade younger, easily.

As She sent the older subject in and turned on the neurotoxin, She studied Wheatley's reaction closely. In the past he'd whimpered, peered through his fingers, raised an empathetic hand to his own throat, or tried to run to another part of the chamber altogether (a choice that had resulted in the reuse of one of Her robotic arms and the creation of a rapidly developing bruise on most of Wheatley's right side), all in response to the horrors he was witnessing, but this time he was still. He simply stared, silent. He didn't even flinch when the subject's body finally collapsed to the floor.

It was time.

_"Good. Your microscopic contribution to Science has increased minimally. And it only cost one more test subject. I'm sure you're very proud."_

Silence. GLaDOS thought about how much She preferred a Wheatley that barely spoke. It was almost a shame what She was going to do to him once his transition was complete.

_"I have one more test subject for you. She will be the last one you watch."_

Wheatley straightened ever so slightly.

_"You will report everything significant that you notice as you see it. Do you understand?"_

"Yeah."

A moment passed before the image on the screen changed to a different chamber entirely. GLaDOS watched Wheatley, but if he felt even the slightest twinge of recognition he didn't show it, at least from behind. Maybe he didn't. It had been quite a while since he'd last seen it.

The door at the beginning of the chamber opened and a subject walked out, her face turned away from the camera. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her scarred, muscled arms gripped the portal device with fiery determination. It had taken GLaDOS hours of combing through the Relaxation Centre subjects to find one with just the right skin tone, the proper defiantly set jaw. She'd had to be instructed on how to wear her jumpsuit, but everything else had been sheer genetic luck.

She was a dead ringer for Chell.

GLaDOS heard Wheatley inhale sharply. He shook as he instinctively leaned towards the screen.

"Is that- Is- Is she-" He began, his head turning slightly to follow the subject as she entered the room. GLaDOS stayed silent.

The test subject studied the room with a close scrutiny, clearly taking note of every obstacle. She knew what she was doing, and her certainty and determination only strengthened her resemblance to Chell. At the bottom of the screen appeared text that read "Subject Name: [REDACTED]".

Wheatley took a few steps closer to the screen.

"You've- you've had her here all this time? You didn't- she's not-"

But before Wheatley could finish, the subject turned her face towards the camera. Although she'd been the best match for Chell that GLaDOS could find, her cheekbones and nose gave her away immediately. She had known Wheatley would be able to recognize that, but the damage was done.

Wheatley's entire body seemed to droop. He knew what She was doing; giving him the tiniest sliver of hope and then ripping it away.

_"Oh. Looks like this subject isn't who you though she was. I'll just remove her for you."_

Quickly, so quickly, a flat metal plate descended from the test chamber ceiling on a thin metal arm, flipping itself over to reveal rows and rows of spikes before smashing itself down on the subject. If anyone had asked, Wheatley would not have been able to describe the strangled cry he heard from the subject, nor the sounds of her body being crushed without becoming violently ill.

All of this, GLaDOS observed, he felt while holding perfectly still. The screen flicked to black.

_"What an unprecedented misunderstanding. Science can be that way. Full of disappointing, tragic, moronic mistakes. For some people. I've heard."_

_"But anyway,"_ She continued, _"now that your testing in this area has reached it's termination, it's time to start a new kind of testing. I can imagine how eager you must be to find out what it is."_

As GLaDOS finished speaking, the panels directly below her folded away to reveal another tangled nest of thickly wired robotic arms, which extended and clicked their pincers hungrily in Wheatley's direction. He still did not turn around, but She watched as his hands slowly curled into tight fists, his back straightening out until he had reached his full height. The pincers slowly began to advance.

_"I can't tell you exactly what it entails, but I'll give you a hint: It's worse than anything your little subject friend could have ever imagined."_

Wheatley was silent. Perfect. She really had scorched the fight out of him. But just as GLaDOS prepared to speak again, She heard his voice cut through the air:

"What was her name?"

A thick curtain of silence fell over the room. The tension was twice as intense as the quiet.

"What was her name??"

GLaDOS was shocked. She hadn't believed there was enough nerve in Wheatley to rebel with. There was a darkness in his tone, a sort of flat, demanding outrage that She had only ever heard from him in the chassis. It was different than before, though. More controlled. More certain.

She made a quick decision.

_"Oh, her?"_ She replied, Her voice a poised snake, _"Her name was Chell. But I'd hardly think you'd be interested in one human right now. Especially a dead one."_

GLaDOS heard another sharp gasp.

"Chell." He spoke it with assurance, as if it was something he'd been trying to remember for a long time. Something he'd lost. His curled fists began to quiver.

"You're lying."

_"What?"_ She snarled.

"You're lying," Wheatley repeated, spinning around and staring directly into Her optic with piercing blue eyes, "I know you're lying! If she was dead you would have told me from the start, wouldn't you? You- you would have made it some sick game, talk about how she died and all that- but you didn't! She's alive, and she's out there somewhere!" 

GLaDOS was furious. She was beyond furious; She was blind with rage at having been confronted by this pathetic, pointless waste of sentience, at having had Her experiment sidetracked so entirely.

In that moment, She realized that this hadn't been nearly a severe enough punishment. Wheatley deserved so much worse.

GLaDOS narrowed Her optic, leaning down until she was almost at eye-level with Wheatley. His shaking had worsened and he flinched when She drew near; clearly he'd used up the last of his nerve to make his little speech. There was still something burning in his eyes, though, something She'd never seen before in him. Something She'd only ever seen once before.

Behind GLaDOS, the hungry crowd of robotic arms raised themselves, poised to strike. Wheatley's gaze flicked to them for only a moment before fixing back on Her optic.

_"Well. It seems my little experiment has failed. Maybe it's time to try another."_

The arms began creeping closer. Wheatley didn't move.

_"Have you ever seen what a steel endoskeleton looks like after all the artificial skin has melted off in an incinerator?"_

Closer and closer.

_"I think it's time you did."_

The arms lunged forward, but to Her surprise, so did Wheatley. As the claws struck like lightning at the spot he should have been in, Wheatley practically flung himself past them and continued in a mad dash towards the dark rectangular hole in the floor that the arms were coming from. He was making a break for it.

**_"No."_** GLaDOS hid none of Her vicious fury as She attempted to retract the arms in time to whack him unconscious, but to no avail. Wheatley had disappeared into the inner workings of the facility.

With Her rage writhing in every wire of every device in the whole of Aperture Science, GLaDOS sent Her mechanical arms in after him, already one step behind.


End file.
